Area medical providers said they were glad the new health care reform plan will reduce the number of uninsured but worried whether the nation’s medical system is ready to handle all the new patients.

“I don’t think it is as bad as the Republicans say nor as good as what the Democrats say,” said Dr. Dev GnanaDev, medical director of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center and former president of the California Medical Association.

“In the end, it is the right step,” said GnanaDev, who made many trips to Washington to lobby for the CMA position on health care reform during 2009 and this year.

Philip Pumerantz, president of Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, was unequivocal in his praise of the new law, which aims to extend health coverage to an estimated 32 million uninsured.

“One person without health insurance is a tragedy,” he said. “What a wonderful thing this country has done.”

In a statement, Loma Linda University Medical Center said: “Every year, LLUMC hospitals, like many hospitals in the country, provided millions of dollars of uncompensated care by giving health care services to uninsured patients.

“Some of the financial strain of providing uncompensated care health care may be relieved with the passage of this health care reform bill.

“Our hospital supports the idea of health care reform. This bill will help with some of the issues facing the healthcare industry. However, there are still many challenges that must be faced, including the shortage of highly-trained medical and clinical providers and physicians to meet the delivery needs of an aging population.”

But some local health experts had reservations.

Dr. Harvey Cohen, a Rancho Cucamonga-based internal medicine specialist and gerontologist, said the health care reform package “took on too much in one swoop.”

It should have been approached on a smaller scale, he said.

“I don’t have details on how it will affect my practice,” Cohen said.

GnanaDev, of Arrowhead Regional, was joined by Dr. Kathleen Clem, chairwoman of the department of emergency medicine at Loma Linda University Medical Center, in voicing concern that the legislation could further flood emergency rooms.

Clem, who was speaking on her own behalf, said that health insurance does not necessarily mean increased access to health care, as the experience in Massachusetts showed.

Clem said she is concerned that adding some 32 million people to the caseloads of existing physicians will lead to long delays for everyone to see a doctor when a health problem pops up.

And that could push people into emergency rooms.

“Emergency rooms are the great equalizer,” she said. People with all forms of insurance will be going there because they won’t be able to get into their primary physicians on a timely basis.

“The newly insured will be competing for your appointment,” she said.

In order to manage that increase, hospitals will need federal relief to better help the flow of patients from emergency rooms into the main hospital’s beds, Clem said.

Often, there aren’t enough nurses in the main hospital to allow for the efficient transfer of patients from emergency rooms.

This delay – called boarding of patients – is a major contributor to emergency room delays, Clem said.

Dr. Raymond Yen, a San Dimas cardiologist, worries that the influx of new patients into the system will drive more people to see specialists.

If, for example, one lives in an area where they can get into a general practitioner in a week and a cardiologist in three weeks, most will opt to see the general practitioner, where blood pressure and cholesterol checks can be performed.

But when the millions of new people come into the system, Yen said the wait times for general practitioners is almost certain to grow.

Yen worries that could add to specialists’ caseloads and create longer waits for people who genuinely need a specialist’s expertise.

GnanaDev said he is concerned that the low reimbursement rates for the additional 1.7 million MediCal patients in California will continue to lock them out of private doctor’s offices, forcing them into local emergency rooms.

In a statement, the California Medical Association said: “Unfortunately, the bill builds health care reform on the broken foundations of Medicare and Medicaid, without adequate funding.”

GnanaDev said despite its problems, the health care reform package is “a good first pitch.”

He likened it to passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, saying that the next two decades will be spent “fixing the problem.”

“We didn’t wake up overnight and become a different nation” in the Civil Rights arena. It’s unrealistic to expect perfection from the first legislation on health care reform, he said.

Jim Holmes, president and CEO of Redlands Community Hospital, said the reform package is no silver bullet.

“I am concerned about some of the details within the health care reform bill, such as its costs, access and capacity to accommodate the new patients,” he said. “I am confident that Redlands Community Hospital and other providers will adapt and continue to provide excellent health care for generations to come.”

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.